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Thick-billed Murre @ Fort Macon SP
- To: salinda daley <salinda.daley@ncwildlife.org>
- Subject: Thick-billed Murre @ Fort Macon SP
- From: "Nathan M. Bacheler" <nmbachel@unity.ncsu.edu>
- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 14:28:44 -0500
- Cc: carolinabirds@duke.edu, bill bacheler <bbachel@up.net>
- Delivered-to: pardo@metalab.unc.edu
- Organization: NC State University
- References: <3E6DB730.23970.2DA273E@localhost>
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
- User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020508 Netscape6/6.2.3
This is a follow-up to Sandy's email earlier this morning about the
Thick-Billed Murre. I visited Fort Macon (1:45pm, Tuesday), and
discovered that the Thick-Billed Murre is still foraging near the rock
jetty. I have a couple of poor-quality digital images of the bird if
anyone is interested (the bird got within 50 ft of me at one point).
Also saw another Razorbill and some Red-throated Loons.
Nate Bacheler
Morehead City, NC
Sandy Cash wrote:
Hi all,
I am on the phone with Josh Rose as I type this, and he reports a
THICK-BILLED MURRE from Fort Macon State Park. The bird was
found by professor Stuart Pimm of Duke at about 9:00 AM today
(3/11/2003). The bird is extremely tame, remaining about 20 feet
offshore and diving frequently in front of the observors. It is in a
patch of shallow water protected by the rocky jetty at the park, in
the broad area where a raft of about 20 RAZORBILLS were reported
yesterday. (Razorbills still being reported from the same location.)
The bird appears to be molting into breeding/alternate plumage -
while it appears all-black from a distance, closer observation
reveals scruffy plumage details around the neck and head. The
bird is very blackish overall (not brownish like Common Murre), and
it has a noticeably thicker bill as well. The white stripe on the
upper mandible is clearly visible.
I myself do not have further details, but the ID seems quite solid -
I'm assuming Josh will post a followup when he returns to Durham.
-Sandy
--
Sandy Cash
Durham, NC
scash@mindspring.com